Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Future of Permanent Magnets

wikicommons

There are things that we take so much
for granted most of us hardly think of their existence if think about them at
all. The permanent magnet market is expected to grow to $18 billion by 2018
according to buymagnets.com. Ignoring the market figure, looking strictly at
market figures, what is a global market of $18 billion, nothing but child’s
play to a statisticians mind when they deal in markets of trillions of dollars,
yet the trillion dollar markets would most likely not be as huge, or even exist
without the $18 billion market for permanent magnets. Knowledge economics
explains why all knowledge is essentially of the same value in terms of units
of knowledge, knowl, using the logic of mathematics, monetary value is a
different issue affected by market demand.

Almost every single current electronic
product, cars, windmill turbines uses permanent magnets. The strongest
permanent magnets come from alloys containing rare earths, and the strongest of
these being neodymium magnets, an alloy of neodymium, iron, and boron.
Neodymium magnets where developed by General Motors because of the high cost of
the previous popular permanent magnets made from an alloy of samarium and
cobalt, necessity being the mother of invention.

China is the largest producer of rare earth
metals, not as rare as the name suggests. There is some concern that the supply
chain relying on Chinese production might not always have a steady supply due
to political factors, fears that the Chinese government wants to control the
market for political and strategic reasons, thus controlling the future. This
fear has led to research into alternatives in the West.

Through grants and other support from
the US government, researchers Daniel Brown, Ke Han, and Theo Siegrist of
Florida State University through a paper entitled “Permanent magnetic
properties in bulk Mn1-xGax that begin to rival
commercial rare – earth magnets” have announced new possibilities. The title of the paper suggests that their
research has found shows that they use an alloy of manganese and gallium to
produce magnets with same strength as rare earths magnets. The trio says in
their press release that “we have produced samples that exhibit coercivity up
to 18.8 kOe, a value equivalent to those of rare earth containing permanent magnets
now in use.” Coercivity being the amount of reverse magnetic force needed to
drive magnetic properties to zero. kOe standing for kilo Oersteds, oersteds
being unit for magnetic fields.

This is good news for this pioneering
research providing world hope for diversified materials for the production of
commercial permanent magnets. Discoveries always have unsuspecting twists and
change in thinking patterns. Though seemingly an economic necessity to find new
materials for reliable permanent magnets, the research will lead other
scientists to think about other factors such as, if we do not need rare earths
for permanent magnets, are we not looking in the wrong place for
superconductivity, the astounding results from the research being carried out
by Brown, Han, and Siegrist would suggest maybe alloys well considered without
rare metals could produce superconductivity in surprising ways as we have been
looking in the wrong place.

By now humans should have realized it is
pointless trying to blackmail the world over materials, humans will just look
for substitutes. Humans should just trade without feeling the need to blackmail
each other to control the future, future must belong to all as human beings. This
research in time will prove to be commercially viable meaning a lot of mining
exploration for rare metals outside China, in places like Greenland will not be
necessary, bad for those miners, but good for the environment.

Are the efforts of the trio worthy of a
Nobel prize, that is up to the Nobel prize committee, their efforts though are
worthy of greater encouragement and notice from the public at large, every
modern device has a permanent magnet made from rare earths, they are changing
the future.

2 comments:

The basic free market newsletter fact about stock and shares are that it allows you study and get a detailed view of things which are all important to have stocking trading newsletter in the business. There are some amazing new times and process following up in the market through right investment newsletter assortments and good stock understanding. The newsletters and new stock newsletter articles will all help in finding out details regarding to the situation at ease.